Most prior art inkjet printers are swath or reciprocating head printers. A printhead is mounted to carriage that is moved back and forth across a pagewidth of the media being printed. As each swath is finished, the media is advanced to enable the subsequent row to be printed. It is also known to provide multiple overlapping swaths to provide greater print density and to reduce banding.
It would be desirable to provide a pagewidth printhead that avoid the need for a reciprocating carriage, thereby enabling faster printing with fewer mechanical parts.
The present applicant has designed a pagewidth printhead comprising a plurality of MEMS chips. One difficulty with such a design is that of abutting or at least positioning the chips closely together. The problem is exacerbated when high resolution printing is desired, because electrical and ink plumbing requirements make it difficult to provide a joint in such a way that a row of nozzles from one chip is relatively continuous with a corresponding row of nozzles on an adjacent chip.